On Thursday, November 7, 2013 11:59:10 PM UTC-7, Satz Klauer wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 9:11 AM, <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > > I was able to get that toolchain working and run a couple of basic > programs > > in an emulated (via qemu) ARM M3 platform. Really, a microcontroller is > the > > biggest thing you'd *really* want to write all the code for as a > hobbyist. > > Digging through TRM details and RAM datasheets to figure out the correct > > timing parameters to program into your SDRAM controller is really not a > lot > > of fun, and you'll never have the time to get a fraction of the BBB's > > peripherals up and running without taking advantage of a LOT of > pre-written > > code. > > BBB is for several reasons the best solution for me. And what I try to > do is not as complex as it sounds, I just want to access some GPIOs, > Ethernet and - perhaps - UART. All the other things like USB, > LCD/HDMI, SPIs and whatever is available on the board is not required. > Meanwhile I have some code running on it - most troubles have been > caused by build problems due to poor Linux support of TIs Starterware. > > Anyway, thanks for your thoughts! >
I actually wrote, with a small team, a set of drivers for the CPSW core that makes up the Ethernet support in the BBB, although my code actually ran on a different SoC. It was not a barebones driver, as it needed to interface with the timestamping engine to support PTP, and it was written for QNX rather than a no-OS environment, but it's at least an order of magnitude more complex than writing a UART driver or GPIO access. The BBB's SoC actually has a 3-port Ethernet switch inside, and the host port is controlled via a DMA interface while the RJ45 on the board is connected to one of the external ports. Even if you've had experience writing ethernet drivers before, you are likely to catch a few snags on this one. I don't know exactly what Starterware provides for you, and it may be enough to get all the grungy system configuration and basic drivers going, but everything is about 10x harder with a complex and featureful SoC than it is on a microcontroller. But if you're set on using the BBB for your bare-metal programming experiments, you're sure to learn a lot (and much of it through hair-pulling frustration), so I wish you luck! -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
